Red-tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

The
Red-tailed Hawk is the most widespread and common of the great raptors
of North America, a familiar sight perched high along roads and next to
open fields scanning for the small mammals that make up most of their
diet. The loud descending scream is memorable and chilling. All the pictures here show the western
type, and most of them the light morph, of this quite variably plumaged species.

The two pictures above and the one below show the adult, with its familiar red tail. The rufouswash on the underparts of the flying bird below is characteristic of western adults, a small proportion of which have dark underparts.

Above
and below, flying redtails showing their underparts; all birds of the
species show the diagnostic patagial bar, the dark feathering on the
forward edge of the inner underwing. Above, an adult, with rufous
wash and a reddish tail; below a juvenile, with white background
feathering underneath, and a light gray background with darker gray
barring on the tail. Western redtails almost all show the band of
darker streaks across the belly. Like most raptors, redtails retain
their juvenal plumage through the whole first year of life.

The
bird above is a heavily streaked light morph bird, with the dark
underpart streaking appearing as a band below a white bib. The bird
below lacks the white bib, and has uniform heavy dark streaking on the
underparts from throat to vent; it is an intermediate morph. A black
morph would have uniformly dark plumage across the underparts.

Above, a juvenile, and below, an adult, both feeding on ground squirrels.

An adult Red-tail feeding on a fresh kill, this one a bird rather than a mammal, an American Coot.